The Apache MINA project is the backbone of our network IO. It has served us well, but also comes with some drawbacks. We have experienced that upgrading to new versions of MINA is typically very painful, as unexpected side-effects often occur. The supporting community of MINA is basically two persons. They are generally very responsive, but they remain just two, which limits the amount of effort that is put in the project.
An alternative library is Netty. It is another mature project, that seems to be more active. Generic consensus in comparison of both projects appear to favor Netty.
Obviously, mileage may vary greatly here. It is not unlikely that the issues that we’re having in Openfire have more to do with a brittle approach in Openfire’s code than in MINAs.
Still, we’ve been at this same cross-road one to many times for my comfort. Let’s see if we can migrate from MINA to Netty.
The Apache MINA project is the backbone of our network IO. It has served us well, but also comes with some drawbacks. We have experienced that upgrading to new versions of MINA is typically very painful, as unexpected side-effects often occur. The supporting community of MINA is basically two persons. They are generally very responsive, but they remain just two, which limits the amount of effort that is put in the project.
An alternative library is Netty. It is another mature project, that seems to be more active. Generic consensus in comparison of both projects appear to favor Netty.
Netty
MINA
Stars
30,545
846
Growth
0.7%
0.2%
Activity
9.7
0.0
Latest Commit
6 days ago
13 days ago
Contributors
604
12
Language
Java
Java
License
Apache License 2.0
Apache License 2.0
Some external comparisons:
https://www.libhunt.com/compare-netty-vs-apache--mina
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1637752/netty-vs-apache-mina
Obviously, mileage may vary greatly here. It is not unlikely that the issues that we’re having in Openfire have more to do with a brittle approach in Openfire’s code than in MINAs.
Still, we’ve been at this same cross-road one to many times for my comfort. Let’s see if we can migrate from MINA to Netty.